The Goodreads Choice Awards 2014!

Last year Emperor of Thorns scraped into the final and came 9th of 10.

This year Goodreads have abolished the Paranormal Fantasy category - the folks with guns, tight leather trousers and bare midriffs are with us - and so really heavy hitters like Jim Butcher, Patricia Briggs and Ilona Andrews are in the mix.

This graph showing the number of ratings the 15 nominees have gathered so far from Goodreads readers - this is likely to translate roughly into the number of votes they'll gather in the Award poll.

(click to see detail)

So you can see that Prince of Fools needs all the votes it can get.

Doing well on these awards is a great boost for any book - so if you're on Goodreads and can spare a vote ... many thanks!

& if you're not on Goodreads ... sign up!

Prince of Thorns, King of Thorns and Emperor of Thorns were nominees in 2011, 2012, and 2013, coming 10th, 4th, and 9th respectively.

The chart below shows the order of results in 2011 with the orange columns showing how many ratings each book acquired on Goodreads in the time since then. Note, it's the area of the column that is proportional to number of ratings. If the columns for the first three were the same width as the columns for the rest, then they would be three times taller!

Such a shame paranormal has been muddled in with fantasy, it dilutes the category somewhat and makes it even harder for the fantasy books to get noticed since paranormal seems to get more of the teenage demographic. :( Anyway, huge good luck mate, I've voted for you again and really hope you can battle on through to the final. Huge good luck, Mark! :D

Congrats on the nomination, Mark -- very well deserved! Since you're a vet at this, maybe you can answer a question for me. There are three rounds of voting, but it looks as though the slate goes from 15-20 books between rounds one and two. That sounds to me as though, if you're not writing someone in, there's no point in voting during round one. What am I missing here? Thanks!

I always love your approach and analysis. This year it looks tough and I also noticed The Emperor's Blades is running for debut GR authors, too. How dispersive is that? I wonder why anyway they didn't split urban and fantasy into two categories. There are many good books here, and I cast my vote for you and wish you good battle!